Newport Gwent Dragons snap up England cricket fitness guru Huw Bevan

Bevan, a former hooker with Bridgend, Cardiff, Swansea and briefly Llanelli, joined the England & Wales Cricket Board in 2009 and was soon elevated to his current role with the senior team in time for the Ashes that summer, the first of three Ashes triumphs in which he was involved

England cricket fitness guru Huw Bevan has left the strength to become the new Newport Gwent Dragons’ new high performance manager in the coming days.

Bevan, a former hooker with Bridgend, Cardiff, Swansea and briefly Llanelli, joined the England & Wales Cricket Board in 2009 and was soon elevated to his current role with the senior team in time for the Ashes that summer, the first of three Ashes triumphs in which he was involved.

Bevan has been a hugely popular member of the backroom staff since then, with fitness levels having improved significantly during that time, no more noticeably than during the winning of the ICC World Twenty20 in the Caribbean in 2010.

There has been considerable upheaval since the Ashes debacle last winter, with Andy Flower, Graham Gooch, Ashley Giles, Richard Halsall and Mushtaq Ahmed all departing from the senior team’s management staff, but new head coach Peter Moores is understood to have been very keen for Bevan to remain within his set-up.

However, Bevan has been tempted by the much wider role at the ambitious Dragons, who are eager to shed their status as Wales’ perennial fourth region and announced that Kingsley Jones had been appointed head coach after spending last season there as a part-time assistant coach.

The Dragons will have use of a new £7m state-of-the-art training facility at Ystrad Mynach, where Bevan will work closely with director of rugby, Lyn Jones, with whom he previously worked when strength and conditioning coach at the Ospreys.

Bevan will be at Lord’s throughout the Test against Sri Lanka this week and continue in his role with the England team until a replacement is found.

The Welsh link with the England cricket set-up has further weakened after former ECB managing director Hugh Morris left Lord's to join Glamorgan as their chief executive and director of cricket.

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